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I searched the mighty internets searching for a pattern to make a tree for our Advent tree. Eventually, not happy with just a plain triangle and not liking some of the others that I had seen, I decided to make my own. I started off with three peices of parchment paper taped to each other and my kitchen table.

After measuring the wall, I decided to make the tree 36 inches wide and 40 inches tall, not including the star at the top or the trunk at the bottom.

Since my wooden ruler only measured 36 inches, I used a piece of red yarn to help make sure I would keep the line straight when I moved the ruler. It worked out very well!!

There you have it! A (mostly) equal triangle, that has also been sectioned every 10 inches (hence the decision to make it 40 inches tall) – leaving four 10 inch sections.

Knowing that when I cut out the pieces of the tree they would not have any over lap, and wanting the tree to have a bit of bounce and not be just a triangle on the wall, I decided to make bounces to go on the bottom. The bottom level (not shown), I added it at the bottom of the pattern. The bounces there were each four inches long. These were drawn free hand, so they aren’t even, but I wasn’t looking for perfection.

Each other bounce set is as follows:

27 inches long, by 1 inch wide and the bounces were 3 inches each

18 inches long, by 1 inch wide and the bounces were 2 inches each

9 1/4 inches long, by 1 inch wide and the bounces were 1 inch each

The pattern is all complete once the bounces have been taped to the bottom of the pattern pieces!

Coming up next: Cutting out the pattern pieces and sewing it all together.

With school being back in session now here in Florida, I am trying to make sure that my girls are eating healthy, but fun things for lunch every day and if it means I get to bake and be frugal at the same time, then bring it on! I recently searched Pinterest for a Sandwich Thins recipe – the girl’s love them, but I feel that the product is too expensive and wanted to make something that used ingredients that I already had (yay!) and that the girls would love.

I found this recipe: My Retro Kitchen: Homemade Sandwich Thins. During my Pinterest wonderings, I saw people making similar things but cutting them out into fun shapes. Since I am only just now getting into Bento boxing, our selection of cutters is severely limited. I chose to go with stars and hearts this time – next time I may break out my Williams and Sonoma Star Wars cutters – I mean, who wouldn’t want to eat a sandwich shaped like Yoda? I know I would!

The changes I made to the recipe was simple. I substituted honey for sugar and halved the amount. I also did not add the wheat bran (I was out). But that was it! Really can’t recommend this recipe higher. The girls inhaled these with egg salad so fast, I’m currently making more to cover for the rest of the week!

I also can not resist showing off the mixer bowl covers I’ve made recently. These were made with PUL fabric I got on sale at Joanns Fabrics. They were easy to make – I used a large dinner plate to draw a circle on some parchment paper. Then I cut out the fabric and sewed elastic about 1/2 an inch away from the edge. You have to remember to pull the elastic tight as you sew so it gathers. From start to finish this project took about 10 minutes. The only changed I made to later covers was to move the elastic to about 1/4 inch from the edge of the circle, still grips fine, just gives me an extra bit of leeway if the bowl I am using is a bit bigger than my KitchenAid stand mixers bowl.